Disasters, maybe. Pestilence, on the other hand, can be quite effective, as the Black Death illustrates. It was two hundred years and more before the population recovered to its earlier peak.
You know that treaty that bans biological warfare? How does that work when any group of Galt's Gulch fantasists can get together the few tens of thousands of dollars for a "design-your-own-killer-virus" lab, and the several hundreds of thousand dollars needed for coördinated worldwide release?
Just one...although it's a bit subtle for most of the rich, who tend to be intellectually lazy and shortsighted.
Fernholz and Fernholz 2012: without redistribution, wealth concentrates. In their simulations, it didn't take long at all to arrive at the point where one household owned everything. It turns out that Monopoly(tm) is a good simulation of capitalism, despite its simplicity.
A farsighted, thoughtful member of the 0.1% (yes, oxymoron, I know) would support an equitable society.
Never mind they can can now be outsourced better and cheaper. How many times have you heard of government agencies spending millions on upgrading systems that are essentially CRM systems, or even worse, payroll systems and the like?
I guess you've never worked on a payroll system for any moderate-to-large enterprise. Payroll is among the hardest things to outsource well. For a recent example of how well it typically goes, google "NZ Novopay news". Paying a few thousand teachers isn't hard, right?
Outsource your payroll. Now, add in the HR hooks: ordinary recruit-review-release stuff, and things like mandatory continuing education and certification requirements for a few dozen different professions, bizarre rostering rules about shift skill and cert mixes, etc., etc. Hook up the outsourced payroll system to your IT auth system and email, your general ledger and banking, your intranet (for leave request workflows)....
Good luck! How much did you say you trust your payroll service provider?
OK, naïve. But: how do structural and process engineers (who maintain industrial plant) get out from under this penny-wise, pound-foolish mindset? Why can't software maintainers do the same as engineers?
I'd only add that Microsoft's hardware "partners" feel f***ed-over as well (as hairyfeet said). So they are no more enthusiastic about what has happened than you, and are most likely looking very hard at their options.
The UI debâcle is a symptom of a problem that runs right through Microsoft. Salvaging it probably requires getting rid of Ballmer and all his direct reports.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
Import tariffs drive up the cost of goods to US consumers and reduce exports. An import tariff is an export tariff.
Look. IP--patents--were invented in the 17th century "to promote the social interest": the purpose of IP is to provide incentives to innovate, because innovation benefits us all. In the 17th century a term of 15 years was thought adequate for an IP monopoly.
The "metabolic rate" of business has increased considerably since the 17th century, so in business terms, fifteen years then is equivalent to about five years now. Has the term of patents dropped accordingly? No. Instead, there is a push to extend the term of patents, and alongside that a trend to making trivial changes to existing products and re-patenting them. Transparent rent-seeking, both practices.
By stealing IP, the Chinese are forcing western corporations to undertake real innovation instead of endlessly re-patenting the same stuff, which of course those corporations hate. (Real innovation is costly, but most of all risky.) The Chinese are doing the consumers of the world a favour by reducing the value of economic rents.
(Don't like my argument? Swap "Chinese" for "Americans" and "western" for "British and European", and it was made in exactly this way from the mid-19th century on. Did we get innovation and growth?)
While I understand that it feels bad to have your secrets copied, it seems to me that China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating - i.e. copying US technology for free.
... a method first perfected by the USA, and which Alexander Hamilton named "the American System".
Further, it's a privacy issue as well. I have a right to keep some things on my computer apart from the public view, just as, when I close the door to my house, I have a right to expect other people not to enter and look around.
Here are some of the tools that allow you to exercise that right: Firewalls. Disk and file encryption. Encrypted password containers. Digital certificates. Intrusion detection software. Properly reviewed and tested open source operating systems, servers, and application software that securely stores and transmits your data.
You don't have a practical right to privacy if you don't close the curtains.
How many small laptops come with gps receivers, vibrators, accelerometers, proximity sensors, noise-cancelling microphony, two cameras, wifi, bluetooth, andthe insanely complex firmware required for cellular radio? How would you rate the power management firmware of an average small laptop compared to that of a high-end cellphone?
There really can't be any doubt about which is the more complex product.
Nearly all new computers sold today are laptops. and nearly all of them have shitty displays, shitty keyboards, and shitty mouse pads. The key caps start falling off fairly soon. After a while, other keys just stop responding, or lose their debouncing so you get 40 'w's in a row. The wifi adapters fail just after warranty expiry, and they have miserable range and throughput. The bluetooth never worked properly to start with. The USB ports get loose and stop working. And as for the battery...
All bad. All really bad. But not the worst.
New PCs come pre-loaded with endless amounts of bloatware that slow them to a crawl. As soon as you log in your shiny new "productivity tool" for the first time, it insists on downloading updates to all of its update downloaders (thanks Randall), and demands that you reboot it sixty-one times. Or, worse, reboots without warning.
For non-technical users, using a consumer PC is like driving through a blizzard, even when it's new. You can do it, but it's no fun. Compare that to a tablet or a large (four or five inch) non-Windows smartphone, and there's no contest.
Why are computer sales down? New computers are broken, and consumers have cottoned on to that.
While obviously no one is "suffering" and no one is "dying"
Every summer there are deaths from heat stress. They're nearly always unreported, though, just like deaths from coal-induced respiratory problems.
With air-con being rationed, the number of heat-stress deaths did increase. People did suffer and people did die in Japan that summer. Unless you were working as an ambulance driver or mortuary assistant while you were there, you have few ways of finding out about those deaths, though. The statistics might be published next year. Or the next.
AC is saying that French bureaucrats, with their 30-hour work weeks and 8 weeks of vacation, can get things done quicker, better, and cheaper than anyone in the USA.
So, go ahead. Place a trade embargo. The US will just slide further back into the past.
Slashdot Mirror
Want to see how the economy will have to work? Think "Star Trek Replicators"; that's why the Federation doesn't use money anymore in the 24th century.
At last! Thank you.
Why wasn't Star Trek the first thing mentioned? Oh, yeah. The thinkers are at HN these days.
Disasters, maybe. Pestilence, on the other hand, can be quite effective, as the Black Death illustrates. It was two hundred years and more before the population recovered to its earlier peak.
You know that treaty that bans biological warfare? How does that work when any group of Galt's Gulch fantasists can get together the few tens of thousands of dollars for a "design-your-own-killer-virus" lab, and the several hundreds of thousand dollars needed for coördinated worldwide release?
Just one...although it's a bit subtle for most of the rich, who tend to be intellectually lazy and shortsighted.
Fernholz and Fernholz 2012: without redistribution, wealth concentrates. In their simulations, it didn't take long at all to arrive at the point where one household owned everything. It turns out that Monopoly(tm) is a good simulation of capitalism, despite its simplicity.
A farsighted, thoughtful member of the 0.1% (yes, oxymoron, I know) would support an equitable society.
Like an old folks home?
Yes, sort of. Steam.
Never mind they can can now be outsourced better and cheaper. How many times have you heard of government agencies spending millions on upgrading systems that are essentially CRM systems, or even worse, payroll systems and the like?
I guess you've never worked on a payroll system for any moderate-to-large enterprise. Payroll is among the hardest things to outsource well. For a recent example of how well it typically goes, google "NZ Novopay news". Paying a few thousand teachers isn't hard, right?
Outsource your payroll. Now, add in the HR hooks: ordinary recruit-review-release stuff, and things like mandatory continuing education and certification requirements for a few dozen different professions, bizarre rostering rules about shift skill and cert mixes, etc., etc. Hook up the outsourced payroll system to your IT auth system and email, your general ledger and banking, your intranet (for leave request workflows)....
Good luck! How much did you say you trust your payroll service provider?
OK, naïve. But: how do structural and process engineers (who maintain industrial plant) get out from under this penny-wise, pound-foolish mindset? Why can't software maintainers do the same as engineers?
... and this is why the world's banking systems run on COBOL and IMS/VSAM/DB2.
Great comment, thanks! I wish I had mod points.
I'd only add that Microsoft's hardware "partners" feel f***ed-over as well (as hairyfeet said). So they are no more enthusiastic about what has happened than you, and are most likely looking very hard at their options.
The UI debâcle is a symptom of a problem that runs right through Microsoft. Salvaging it probably requires getting rid of Ballmer and all his direct reports.
Thanks! /. has been sadly deficient in car analogies recently. Faith restored.
Copyright? What's going on with this thread?
I read TFS as saying "hey -- how about using Youtube as another free online backup service?"
Not going to work because of DMCA takedowns.
-- H. L. Mencken
Import tariffs drive up the cost of goods to US consumers and reduce exports. An import tariff is an export tariff.
Look. IP--patents--were invented in the 17th century "to promote the social interest": the purpose of IP is to provide incentives to innovate, because innovation benefits us all. In the 17th century a term of 15 years was thought adequate for an IP monopoly.
The "metabolic rate" of business has increased considerably since the 17th century, so in business terms, fifteen years then is equivalent to about five years now. Has the term of patents dropped accordingly? No. Instead, there is a push to extend the term of patents, and alongside that a trend to making trivial changes to existing products and re-patenting them. Transparent rent-seeking, both practices.
By stealing IP, the Chinese are forcing western corporations to undertake real innovation instead of endlessly re-patenting the same stuff, which of course those corporations hate. (Real innovation is costly, but most of all risky.) The Chinese are doing the consumers of the world a favour by reducing the value of economic rents.
(Don't like my argument? Swap "Chinese" for "Americans" and "western" for "British and European", and it was made in exactly this way from the mid-19th century on. Did we get innovation and growth?)
While I understand that it feels bad to have your secrets copied, it seems to me that China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating - i.e. copying US technology for free.
... a method first perfected by the USA, and which Alexander Hamilton named "the American System".
Further, it's a privacy issue as well. I have a right to keep some things on my computer apart from the public view, just as, when I close the door to my house, I have a right to expect other people not to enter and look around.
Here are some of the tools that allow you to exercise that right: Firewalls. Disk and file encryption. Encrypted password containers. Digital certificates. Intrusion detection software. Properly reviewed and tested open source operating systems, servers, and application software that securely stores and transmits your data.
You don't have a practical right to privacy if you don't close the curtains.
Shouldn't that be I baldy predict ...?
How many small laptops come with gps receivers, vibrators, accelerometers, proximity sensors, noise-cancelling microphony, two cameras, wifi, bluetooth, andthe insanely complex firmware required for cellular radio? How would you rate the power management firmware of an average small laptop compared to that of a high-end cellphone?
There really can't be any doubt about which is the more complex product.
But it is broke.
Nearly all new computers sold today are laptops. and nearly all of them have shitty displays, shitty keyboards, and shitty mouse pads. The key caps start falling off fairly soon. After a while, other keys just stop responding, or lose their debouncing so you get 40 'w's in a row. The wifi adapters fail just after warranty expiry, and they have miserable range and throughput. The bluetooth never worked properly to start with. The USB ports get loose and stop working. And as for the battery...
All bad. All really bad. But not the worst.
New PCs come pre-loaded with endless amounts of bloatware that slow them to a crawl. As soon as you log in your shiny new "productivity tool" for the first time, it insists on downloading updates to all of its update downloaders (thanks Randall), and demands that you reboot it sixty-one times. Or, worse, reboots without warning.
For non-technical users, using a consumer PC is like driving through a blizzard, even when it's new. You can do it, but it's no fun. Compare that to a tablet or a large (four or five inch) non-Windows smartphone, and there's no contest.
Why are computer sales down? New computers are broken, and consumers have cottoned on to that.
Good point.
Another idea: people like "free".
Windows is on version 8. Mac OS is on ten. So Linux should be called "Free OS 12".
RFQ? Uh, that's "request for quotation".
Also, ROI is "registration of interest", RFT is "request for tender"--but that's usually just expressed as "putting out a tender".
How about we put the long-term waste under Denver?
Oh, wait. Nature already did that.
While obviously no one is "suffering" and no one is "dying"
Every summer there are deaths from heat stress. They're nearly always unreported, though, just like deaths from coal-induced respiratory problems.
With air-con being rationed, the number of heat-stress deaths did increase. People did suffer and people did die in Japan that summer. Unless you were working as an ambulance driver or mortuary assistant while you were there, you have few ways of finding out about those deaths, though. The statistics might be published next year. Or the next.
AC is saying that French bureaucrats, with their 30-hour work weeks and 8 weeks of vacation, can get things done quicker, better, and cheaper than anyone in the USA.
So, go ahead. Place a trade embargo. The US will just slide further back into the past.
Can you do it at gigawatt scale?
No.
Renewables are multiple orders of magnitude less 'impacting' than fossil fuels or nuclear.
You think? I have a nice house underneath Lake Mead going cheap...
In reality, things are not so clear-cut. Context is key.
ggg?G
There.
You're in good company. Why The Lucky Stiff and Mark Pilgrim got a lot of stick for their response to this problem.
Belatedly, the rest of us realise what they saw two years ago.